The High Performance eLearning Team's Top Qualities
What makes a dream eLearning team? What are the traits and characteristics that an eLearning team must have in order to produce the highest number possible of excellent eLearning courses? What tools and behaviors generate the best possible results? In this article, I'll share 7 top qualities that every high performance eLearning team must have, so that you can make sure that your team’s members are greatly involved in heir jobs, support each other, and deliver eLearning projects that make learners more engaged and more motivated to learn.
- Clear goals.
Lack of focus on the ultimate goal of your eLearning project can be disastrous for your team’s performance. Make sure that all the members of your eLearning team understand their common goals, as a shared ambition allows them to anticipate what needs to be achieved, which greatly boosts performance. Having clear goals will prevent your eLearning team from losing sight of the tasks that need to be completed, whereas it helps holding the team together when debates and disagreements related to the attainment of the goal occur. When everyone clearly understands what the outcome needs to be, they better understand not only how their individual part can support it, but also the other members’ contribution. High performance eLearning teams share a clear understanding of what they are trying to achieve and work cohesively to reach their common objectives. - Commitment to a common purpose.
There is enormous power in a common vision; when the objectives of your eLearning team are clear and shared by everyone, it inspires each member to feel committed towards achieving the set goal. When committed to a common purpose, which is the essence of every team, your eLearning team´s members hold themselves mutually accountable; that means that they want to develop their skills so that they can better contribute to the collective effort. Motivation and drive are greatly enhanced, and, furthermore, when inevitable disputes and disagreements arise, individual and mutual accountability help them soothe tension. If you are aiming to create a high performance eLearning team, you must build a strong team first; and nothing makes a team stronger than a common cause. - Shared values.
Sustaining high performance is impossible without having shared values. Common values and beliefs are the moral and operational compasses of a team, as they guide behaviors and can actively be used as principles to make critical decisions. Honesty, openness to different opinions, tolerance to mistakes, and flexibility create infinite possibilities and generate the best ideas. It is essential for a high performance eLearning team to have common values, as a team whose members have nothing in common is much less likely to meet the set objectives. - Multidimensional skills.
While each member of a high performance eLearning team must have a clearly defined job, effective teamwork means understanding that this is not enough; the more skills, talents, and strengths are being used, the better. In other words, multidimensional skills and expertise may be essential for achieving high performance and building success. Subject matter experts who know a few things about instructional design, authoring tools specialists who can convert learning material into interactive eLearning content, graphic designers who can enhance eLearning with images and graphics, IT experts who may deal with IT problem when they arise, and so on, can be really useful to offer additional perspectives and functional alternatives. All in all, the more multidimensional are the strengths of your eLearning team’s members, the greater the levels of innovation, and the greater the possibilities for a higher performance. - Flexible eLearning development process.
An agile development process, which allows greater flexibility to project management, identifies problematic issues early and responds to change easily. In fact, changes during the eLearning development stage are not only expected, but also welcome, as flexibility is an essential characteristic of a highly motivated and a high performance eLearning team. Keeping your eLearning design and development options open until the last moment creates a rewarding experience for everyone, as it allows for constant improvements, boosts the collaborative spirit of your eLearning team, and makes the discovering of new alternatives easier. Furthermore, a fluid development process is the most fertile ground for learning from mistakes, which greatly deepens knowledge, points in more creative directions, and reveals new eLearning insights. - Collaboration, trust, and support among team members.
A strong team culture is another crucial quality of a high performance eLearning team. Collaboration within the team, trusting relationships, and positive spirit are essential elements of high performance eLearning teams, as they get things going and done. When your team’s members come together trying to find solutions when needed, things move forward. In other words, they may reach optimum performance when they truly believe that the most effective way to achieve success is through collective effort. Building a supporting team system will ensure powerful interactions and high productivity, as teamwork is reinforced when there is respect of the abilities and skills of the other team members, and trust among them. This last one is particularly crucial, as the absence of trust can lead to withholding ideas, questions, or observations, which will negatively impact creative thinking. - Frequent performance reviews.
People want to be recognized for both their individual achievements and their contribution to a team effort. Evaluating team performance will allow you to measure your eLearning team’s progress, clarify misunderstandings, and recognize and reward high performances. Arrange review meetings, face to face or online, and use clear communication to discuss previous performance, future development, new targets and objectives, as well as to identify elements that may need to be improved or changed. Furthermore, make clear how you want your team to handle breakdowns; high performance eLearning teams see opportunities in breakdowns, create new ways to deal with them, and quickly return to action with renewed energy to achieve their goals. Challenges are always there; the important thing is to create an environment where your eLearning team can learn how to transform them into new opportunities. Remember to proceed to performance evaluation on a regular basis, as this is a great way to evaluate team and individual performance, manage breakdowns, make overall assessments, and reassess the coherence and consistency of your eLearning product’s development.
Now that you know what makes a high performance eLearning team, you may be interested in recruiting the right eLearning professionals for your eLearning team. Read the article 6 Tips On Interviewing eLearning Professionals and learn how you can make sure that you get the most out of the interviewing process.
